


Motion in the Ocean

by forochel



Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: Absurd, Canon Universe, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Humor, M/M, Selkies, Surprise feelings, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-12 23:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: Jinyoung is a selkie. Kind of.--"You're a what." Jaebeom said flatly."I'm half-sea lion," said Jinyoung earnestly. "Well, maybe only a quarter? Eomma married Appa after he gave her back her pelt because she decided she liked samgyeopsal too much to give it up."





	Motion in the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bysine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bysine/gifts).

> I ... have no excuses. I just said to bysine on TUESDAY that I wanted selkie fic, but that I didn't want it to be sad, and then they reminded me of the superlative [selkie!bucky fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13460625) by silentwalrus and I HAD A GALAXY BRAIN MOMENT and this has eaten my brain for the past six days. 
> 
> and yes the title is a sex joke why write a crack fic if one does not make sex jokes in the title.

"You're a what." Jaebeom said flatly.

"I'm half-sea lion," said Jinyoung earnestly. "Well, maybe only a quarter? Eomma married Appa after he gave her back her pelt because she decided she liked samgyeopsal too much to give it up."

There was a pause during which Jaebeom felt there was no fucking way he would ever be able to process any of the words coming out of Jinyoung's mouth.

"And Appa," Jinyoung added. "Appa too of course! She liked Appa a lot. Likes."

Giving up, Jaebeom decided that if Jinyoung was having a mental break it might as well be collective. "And what ... does this have to do with finding you a body of water?"

"Oh," Jinyoung said sheepishly, "We don't have a bathtub and I can't exactly do this in the public baths, but .... I need to turn into my sea lion form before I go crazy."

_ Before _ he went crazy, Jaebeom reflected, was exactly what a crazy person would say.

"And this is why you want to run away to the beach even though we're debuting soon and should be practising," Jaebeom said.

"Well," Jinyoung said matter-of-factly, "it's either that or break into a pool, and honestly, chlorine fucks me up."

After some extremely last-minute, extremely obvious spelunking around Naver, Jaebeom looked up from his phone. "Can't you just change here? It says sea lions spend lots of time on land."

"I am a _ sea lion _ ," Jinyoung said, pouting mightily. "I want to _ swim _."

  


*

  


Jinyoung, in his sea lion form, was basically puddled over the entire available floor space.

"Jinyoungie says he hasn't reached like. Full maturity as a sea lion yet," Jaebeom recited soullessly.

He hadn't wanted to tell the others just yet, not when everything was so new, but then Jinyoung had got into one of his moods because the maknae were being unbearable and then -- suddenly, sea lion.

That was _ one way _ of shutting everyone up.

"I didn't leave America for this," Mark said. "What the fuck."

Jinyoung made a sound like if you blew up a goose to about a thousand times its size and got it really mad. He slapped a dark brown flipper -- delicate looking, but Jaebeom had been slapped by one before, when Jinyoung had still only been a pup -- against his flank. 

Somehow, even in sea lion form, Jinyoung managed to make that sound disdainful.

"Does he ... turn back ... on command?" Jackson asked, big eyes even bigger.

Jaebeom looked at Jinyoung, who'd clearly tired of them all and had lain his head down on a cushion, blubbery folds in his neck creasing in the previously sleek smooth grey column of it, folding his front and rear flippers neatly so that he looked nothing so much like a --

"Hyung looks like a mandu," Bambam said, finally finding his tongue again. "Like. A really, really, really big mandu. With fur. A mouldy mandu?"

"Daebak," Yugyeom whispered. He was hiding a little behind Bambam to hilarious effect, being about twice the height of his best friend.

Jinyoung opened a gleaming, black eye and glared.

"Jinyoung-ah," Jaebeom tried. "Please would you turn back?"

In one great massive undertaking, Jinyoung rolled over and pointedly put his back to all of them.

  


*

As the years passed, the boys all got fairly used to Jinyoung occasionally turning into a sea lion and flooding their bathroom. It was much harder to make a getaway to the nearest body of saltwater, as their popularity rose and their schedules became as packed as a can of tuna. 

It was so obvious, after everything, why he'd insisted on finding a new apartment with a bathtub. 

All he had to do was blink those big, glossy cow eyes at Jaebeom, and Jaebeom would capitulate and go to bat for him with the managers.

They also got used to Mark yelling "Not on the SOFA!!!"

In any other context, one would think that their not-so-metaphorical parents were doing very un-family-friendly things on the sofa.

In the context of GOT7's communal living, however, this meant that Mark had emerged from his den of WoW and Counterstrike to espie all 150 kilograms of Jinyoung in his sea lion form, flopped across the sofa and Jaebeom's lap.

"We're just watching a movie," Jaebeom almost always said. Sometimes they were just listening to music and reading a book. Or, well, it was Jaebeom reading aloud whilst Jinyoung vocalised low in the back of his throat, almost like a purr. 

"Do sea lions even have colour vision?" Mark demanded, squinting at the saturated colour palette of _ Chungking Express _.

Jinyoung made a very rude noise, like he'd just swallowed an aardvark and vomitted out the first syllable.

"No," said Jaebeom wearily. He wondered how he had become GOT7's foremost expert on sea lions sometimes, and then stopped thinking about it, because to do so would be to fall into existential despair. "They have limited colour vision. We've watched this film before."

"Do you realise you use the couple 'we' more than half the time now?" Mark asked next, arms akimbo.

"Does it matter?" Jaebeom said, rubbing a thumb over the tufted fur in between Jinyoung's ear flaps. Jinyoung made a series of pleased clicks and gathered his back flippers under himself to curl closer to Jaebeom. The preternatural flexibility of a sea lion's body really did make him look like the most gigantic, grey-washed mandu on earth, sometimes. 

Mark stared at them and let out a long, low breath. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he muttered, "We really shouldn't be encouraging this kind of behaviour," and retreated. 

  


*

  


Despite how indulgent Jaebeom was of Jinyoung, they did occasionally brush up against each other's rough edges, or Jinyoung pushed a little much, a little too far and ran headlong into the unyielding bedrock of Jaebeom's conviction.

Unstoppable force meets immoveable rock, and the rest of them just waiting along the sidelines for the fall-out. 

"I can't believe we only have Jinyoung's sense of responsibility, which is about as big as him when he's a sea lion," Bambam said, observing the stand-off between Jinyoung and Jaebeom and forecasting the inevitable snit Jinyoung was going to be in, "standing between us performing as six humans and one sea lion, and carrying on activities as per."

"That's JINYOUNG-_ HYUNG _ TO YOU, BRAT!!!" Jinyoung yelled. There were a few more overtones to his shout than could be strictly considered humanly possible.

"Mongolian throat singing," Youngjae observed. "Jinyoung-hyung has it in the bag."

Bambam shouted in return: "HOW OLD ARE YOU IN SEA LION YEARS ANYWAY???"

Jinyoung abruptly turned into his sea lion form -- they had all learnt to blink at the right moment, or have to experience that brief, laws-of-physics-tearing moment of existential horror again -- and fucking _ surged _ after Bambam.

Bambam would like his epitaph to note that Jaebeom hyung, their supposedly Glorious Leader, hadn't _ even tried. _

As it was, Bambam yelped and quickly scrambled backwards, trying to make for higher ground.

"Wow," Youngjae observed, laughing, from his safe perch atop the sofa back as well as Jinyoung's favouritism pyramid. "Look at that ground speed."

"Daebak," Yugyeom agreed from his slightly more precarious perch on the arm of the sofa.

At that moment, Jackson opened their front door, carolling, "I'M HOME WHO MISSED --"

And then he backed out and closed the door on himself.

"Jinyoungie," Jaebeom pleaded later in the privacy of his shared bedroom with Jackson. 

Jackson still hadn't come home after his retreat. Jinyoung was still a sea lion, and had led the way to Jaebeom's room earlier, hefting himself along through the narrow corridors and only occasionally snarling in annoyance.

"Jinyoungie," Jaebeom repeated himself, stroking at the soft fur between Jinyoung's ear flaps. Jinyoung nudged into his hand and let out a surprisingly gentle rattle. If there were death kittens, that's what they'd probably sound like. "You can't just turn whenever you're pissed off at the maknae."

Jinyoung turned his head, rotating his neck far beyond what ought to be normal, to glare balefully up at Jaebeom. His entire head took up all of Jaebeom's lap, and the rest of him was curved elegantly out across the span of Jaebeom's room from the bunk beds to the door. One flipper thumped impatiently against the floor, as if to say _ And your point is? _

"Or me," Jaebeom added. 

This time, Jinyoung thumped his head into Jaebeom's lap.

Jaebeom yelped in alarm, hands flying to cover the goods. "Jinyoung-ah! You want me to keep these!" 

Growling like a car with a leaky exhaust pipe, Jinyoung rolled his head off onto the mattress. In the low light of the room, his eyes gleamed and his whiskers twitched apologetically. 

And then he was rearing up -- always a mildly terrifying sight, no matter how much Jaebeom trusted than Jinyoung wouldn't maim him _ on purpose _ \-- and gently pushing Jaebeom's face away to face the wall. 

Again -- that feeling of the fabric of reality tearing apart and mending itself in a second that never existed -- and then the alarmingly nailed flipper engulfing his cheek had become Jinyoung's soft, human hand, his long, elegant fingers cradling his face. 

"You can look now," Jinyoung said, and poured himself into Jaebeom's lap as Jaebeom turned back. Even after changing, he retained the fluid, clean lines of how sea lions moved in water. "I'm sorry."

"For nailing me in the nuts?" Jaebeom checked.

Jinyoung's smoky giggles always knocked something loose in Jaebeom's chest, always called up a smile in return to the crinkly way that Jinyoung's face scrunched up. 

"Yes," he said, and smacked Jaebeom playfully on a pec, before sobering up and tucking his face into Jaebeom's neck, nosing at his pulse like he still had a sea lion's sense of smell. 

For all that Jaebeom had learnt from his reading over the years about sea lions, and sea lion selkies, they'd never really talked about what Jinyoung could or could not do, or would or would not do. Jinyoung always dismissed everything with an _ I'm only a quarter sea lion, maybe, what are genetics in the face of magic? _ before proceeding to distract Jaebeom quite thoroughly. 

"But?" Jaebeom guessed.

"No buts," Jinyoung murmured, inhaling deep with his mouth open, like he was trying to _ taste _ the way Jaebeom smelt. It was another one of those things that Jaebeom had also got used to. "I'm just sorry. Blanket sorry." 

Jaebeom hadn't been angry, to be honest, since Jinyoung had turned his petulant rage onto Bambam and Youngjae had narrated it all, gasping with laughter, like a hunt nature documentary. He wrapped his arms around Jinyoung, one across his back and the other tight on his hips, pulling him closer.

The door slammed open. 

Jackson's voice preceded his physical self.

"THIS HAD BETTER NOT BE SOME NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MASSACR -- _ OH MY GOD NOT ON _ ** _MY BED_ ** _ !!!! _"

The door slammed shut.

They could hear Jackson's traumatised whimpers of "Jinyoung is _ naked _ on _ my bed _" anyway.

Audible as well was Youngjae, exasperated, telling Jackson, "I did tell you to knock first, hyung."

"But it's _ my room too _," Jackson protested. 

The rest of his complaints dwindled away into the distance as they presumably went away.

Feeling guilty, Jaebeom moved to slide Jinyoung off his lap, but Jinyoung clung on like a limpet, shaking with laughter. 

"He has a point, though," Jaebeom said, giving up and settling his hands loosely on Jinyoung's hips, rubbing idly at the divots of his hipbones. Jinyoung had been working out more, lately, and the band of muscle stretching laterally across his side was eating away at the previously soft give of flesh there. "Why do you always end up naked when you turn back?" 

Jinyoung shrugged, mouth wrily pulling to one side. "Magic."

  


*

  


"I don't understand how hyungie can move like that when he is ... " Yugyeom trailed off, evidently recalling Bambam's near-death experience at the hands -- or rather, blubber -- of Sea Lion Jinyoung.

"He's 75% human," Jaebeom said wearily in the tones of one who had just accepted that this was his fate. "Give or take a few percentage points, because magic."

They watched Jinyoung sharpen the movement of his hips in relation to his arms in the mirror, over and over, mouth set into a determined pout. Jaebeom thought about telling him to take a break, given that they had been allowed some rest for once. 

"Anyway, you haven't seen him swim yet, have you? Properly, I mean."

"You have?" Yugyeom asked.

Jaebeom closed his eyes; it was hard to forget.

The illicit thrill of sneaking out to the seaside with Jinyoungie all those years ago, leaving only a note that said "MENTAL HEALTH BREAK!!!! We'll be back by dinner time, promise" for their manager, would have sharpened the memory enough.

But then there had been the magic of seeing Jinyoung cut through the water, a dark torpedo gleefully surfing the crest of the rolling waves that had come crashing onto the shore.

It had been cold, still, at the tail end of spring; Jaebeom had huddled into his puffy coat, sea breeze whipping into his face, and steadied himself in his tall rubber boots. He had positioned himself just under the tideline, so that the waves that crashed against the shore surged up against his ankles, cut away at the sand underneath his soles as they retreated. 

He'd watched, mesmerised, as Jinyoung had ridden the waves, gliding on the tip of a wave and then flipping away just before it broke onto the sand, some preternatural sense telling him when to go chasing after the next one, further out at sea.

They had been all alone, on this remote little strip of beach at the end of a long bus ride, far away from any tourist hot spots. Jinyoung had apparently found it a year or so after coming up to Seoul, one of the times he'd dragged Wonpil with him on these long, wending bus trips out into the coastal areas beyond Seoul just so he had a quiet, private place to get the sea-longing scraped loose.

"What will happen," Jaebeom had asked later, when they were both tired and sea-scoured, on their way back into Seoul, "when you're too busy to go to the seaside?" 

Jinyoung had shrugged, his thin shoulders sliding against Jaebeom's arm. They were pressed close together, huddled for warmth, near the back of the bus. "I don't need it very often, and I can still turn." 

He'd sounded a little forlorn, a wistful set to his mouth where it was turned to the window. 

"Yeah," Jaebeom said quietly, opening his eyes again to be pinned by Jinyoung's dark gaze on him in the mirror. "A long time ago."

  


*

  


The rest of the kids (and Mark-hyung by turns long-suffering and short-suffering) did eventually get to see Jinyoung swim properly, if only in his human form.

Jaebeom had no idea what Jinyoung did with his pelt whenever they had a water-based schedule. Every time Jinyoung had to pretend to drown for an MV or a drama shoot, or whenever they soaked in a pool. He was curious, but not curious enough to invade Jinyoung's privacy. Not when it was something as personal to a selkie as their pelt. 

"Don't you want to know?" Jackson had asked him once, as they'd huddled, wet and shivering together in the cold of the warehouse they were filming in. "Like ... aren't you curious at all?" 

"You need to read a book," Jaebeom had told him. 

"Wow," said Jackson, shaking water out of his hair and onto Jaebeom. Sometimes Jaebeom wondered if they were all really animals. "No need to go there."

Jaebeom sighed, wrapped his towel tighter around himself. "I'm curious, but I don't want Jinyoungie to feel pressured."

"Why would he?" Jackson asked, all innocent ignorance. 

And Jaebeom had been about to reply, but one of the professional divers padded past them, flippers making sucking sounds as they stuck to the floor and peeled off, together with a stylist noona. 

"He swims beautifully," said the diver to Huiyeon-noona, who was determinedly gripping her fixing spray and had a grim look on her face.

"I," she said in return, "don't care how beautifully Jinyoung-goon swims. I just care that he looks beautiful. Which is very hard when we have underwater shoots."

"Poor you." The diver pat her in a friendly way on the arm. Jackson raised his eyebrows in that particular way of one who has just _ seen the goss _ and was excited to tell _ everyone _. 

"Waterproof make-up is so expensive," Huiyeon-noona continued. Jaebeom didn't think she knew how the weird, echoey qualities of the water tank chamber amplified her whisper. "And upper management is really riding our asses about the style budget." 

"Ah," said her companion. "The corporate life." 

Huiyeon-noona made a grumpy noise.

"But really, if he doesn't want to be an idol anymore he could have a career in ... swimming beautifully. It's like he's born to the water." The diver pointed into the tank. "Do you see the way he's dolphin stroking up? Clean and efficient." 

"_ Born to the water _." Jackson snorted next to Jaebeom. "If only he knew."

"He better not," muttered Jaebeom. 

Jackson perked up. "Oh my god! We should just ... rent a place like this for Jinyoungie, you know. Let him get it all out of his system."

"How would we find enough seawater to fill this tank with?" Jaebeom asked. 

"Does it have to be seawater?"

Jaebeom looked at Jackson. Did Jackson think that they spent a mini fortune on bath salts every quarter _ just because Jinyoung wanted to be the most fragrant sea lion in existence _?

"Yes," said Jaebeom. "Apparently chlorine is bad for sea mammals."

"Oh," said Jackson, a little crestfallen. "That makes sense." 

"Why do you sound so disappointed?"

Jackson rocked from side-to-side, assuming his most winsome look. Jaebeom braced himself.

"Weeeeeeell," said Jackson in his cutest voice, "Yugyeom said that you said that you've seen Jinyoung swim in his, you know, before ..."

In the distance, Jinyoung had breached the surface, hair somehow not plastered to his skull but swept back dashingly. It would be aggravating if he weren't so cute, with the way he was blinking water out of his eyes and dragging in oxygen. 

"Noona!" Jinyoung protested loudly, his voice bouncing off the walls, when Huiyeon swept in to retouch his make-up. "Let me breathe --"

She was already patting his face dry and reapplying something or other in quick, efficient strokes, spraying the fixer over his face and telling him firmly to stay afloat until it set. 

Jinyoung pouted at her, and she rolled her eyes, flapping her hand at his face in an effort to hasten the setting.

"Do you think they test the stylists for, like, how stern the stuff they're made of is?" Jackson whispered, having evidently been watching too.

"I think Huiyeon-noona got her promotion for a reason." 

They both shrank back simultaneously when Jinyoung turned his pout on them; even at this distance, it was potent. Jinyoung lifted a hand from the side of the pool and beckoned. 

"You're it," Jackson said, standing up hastily. "I'm going to go get a hot drink."

Jaebeom smiled weakly and waved at Jinyoung, creaking to his feet.. "Get me one too. And for Jinyoungie." 

"Sure, sure," said Jackson, and made a whipping noise as he walked off. 

And so Jaebeom had thought Jackson's initial line of enquiry about Jinyoung in his marine form well derailed. 

More fool he.

  


*

  


In Jaebeom's defence, all curiosity about Jinyoung in his sea lion form, in an appropriately salty body of water, seemed to have died down. 

Especially when Jinyoung put himself on a strict sea lion schedule -- almost as strict as his diet -- and made use of every rare two-day stretch he had off work to go home to Jinhae or make Jaebeom, when available, drive him to one of the deserted coastal inlets to get in his sea lion time. No longer were the maknae menaced by the sudden appearance of a massive marine predator whenever they ticked Jinyoung off, nor was their bathroom as prone to flooding as before. Much to everyone's relief, including Nora.

Also, it wasn't as though they didn't have _ the Internet _ and _ Youtube _ at their fingertips. 

Merely searching 'sea lion swimming' would have brought them, amongst others: 

  1. 3 hours of sea lions and seals swimming underwater set to very calming music, highly recommended, sent Jaebeom straight to sleep after three nights of insomnia; 
  2. a baby sea lion swimming lesson, very recommended, possibly sent Jinyoung a little baby-mad; 
  3. more videos of people filming themselves swimming with wild sea lions than expected, recommendation uncertain, do not try at home. 

And so it was _ years _ later that he realised that he had merely been lulled into a state of complacency. He wished he couldn't believe that his teammates were capable of playing such a long game; alas, when it came down to it, he could. 

When the briefing was over and the staff had left the villa, and they'd finished the last of their drinks, the boys turned shining, expectant eyes on Jinyoung. And Jaebeom, who sobered up pretty damn fast. 

On the other hand, Jinyoung beyond his one (1) glass of anything was very pliant and susceptible to suggestion, short of Jaebeom putting his foot firmly down.

It was very hard to put anything firmly down without breaking something when they were this tipsy. 

"You ... _ want _ me to turn?" Jinyoung asked, sounding stunned and transparently pleased. 

"Well, you know, we have all this pool," said Bambam persuasively, swirling the melted ice water in his tumbler like some kind of Bond villain. "And --"

Jinyoung's chair screeched into the kitchen island as he shot to his feet and wobbled for a few seconds.

"Jinyoung-ah," Jaebeom started, pulling on his hoodie. 

"No," said Jinyoung, tugging away and striding to the glass doors. "You will not get between me and the water, Im Jaebeom."

"It's not really water, though --" Jaebeom trailed hopelessly behind Jinyoung, catching his hoodie as Jinyoung pulled it off and tossed it carelessly behind himself. "_ Nyoungie _, didn't you say chlorine fucks you up?"

Apparently what Jinyoung had meant by _ chlorine fucks me up _ was not that he'd shrivel up and then they'd have to go find a marine life veterinary specialist, but that _ sea lion selkies got high on chlorine _. Possible especially when the human was already inebriated.

"I'm so sad we can't video this," Yugyeom lamented, as they looked on at Jinyoung, currently a massive, happily wriggling mountain of blubber and muscle, chirping joyfully at the night sky.

"We can," Bambam said, his phone already out. "We merely may not."

Youngjae slapped his phone into the pool.

"Oops," he said, widening his eyes. "All that wine must have really got to me."

Bambam gaped at him, speechless with shock.

Ignoring this byplay, Jaebeom continued trying to get Jinyoung to calm down and turn back into his human form. Actually -- calming down was optional, the human part was most important when they had more filming the next morning and the crew were coming by in under eight hours to set up again.

Jinyoung stilled momentarily, turning startlingly lucid eyes -- the _ snake _! -- onto Jaebeom, before rolling away.

"No!" Jaebeom shouted, trying to grab at him.

But what was the strength of three men, even if one of those men was Jackson Wang, against the inexorable might of a sea lion who was very determined to get high again and willing to play dirty.

"He _ hit _ me!" Jackson yelled, looking absolutely betrayed and also very winded, flat on his back. "With his _ flipper _!"

Jinyoung let out a series of creaky barks, punctuated by a loud splash as he made contact with the pool.

Mark pat Jaebeom on the back, stretched his arms out over his head, and started walking back into the villa. "I'm done. I'm out. Whatever."

Jaebeom cuffed the legs of his sweats higher and sat down by the edge of the pool.

"Bad move," whispered Bambam. Only he and Youngjae had remained outside -- Yugyeom had whined something about this being "too weird, it's too weird" and retreated after the rest of their hyungs.

"I don't think Jaebeom-hyung's watched any of the BBC Earth series," Youngjae said at a normal volume.

"If you aren't going to be helpful," Jaebeom gritted out, "go to bed."

"We're helping!" Bambam protested.

"Yeah," Youngjae chimed in, "We're telling you _ not _ to sit --"

Jinyoung shot straight up out of the water and latched onto Jaebeom by the oversized shirt hanging loose off his shoulders.

With a shout, Jaebeom toppled into the pool.

"That." Youngjae concluded. "That was what we were trying to stop." 

He started cackling when Jaebeom surfaced, hair plastered to his head and spluttering.

Younjae's cackles were accompanied by the creaking barks of Jinyoung, who was now floating peaceably by Jaebeom, confident in the knowledge that Jaebeom would never in a hundred years be able to dunk him back in this form.

"Is that ... Jinyoung's _ laughter _ ?" Bambam said, finally removing the sunglasses he'd insisted on keeping on long after the sun had set. _ It's fashion, baby _, he had declared, and everyone had just decided not to die on this particular hill.

"THAT," yelled Jinyoung in Human, "IS _ HYUNG _ TO YOU, BRAT!!!"

They looked over, shocked, only to look quickly away again.

"Oh my GOD," whined Youngjae, "WHY."

"MY INNOCENT EYES!!!" Bambam wailed.

"YOUR EYES HAVEN'T BEEN INNOCENT SINCE _ YOU WERE BORN _!" Jinyoung's voice was getting louder and louder, feet slapping wet against the tiled floor.

"Jinyoungie," Jaebeom pleaded, chasing after him and whipping his shirt off. "Clothes!"

"This is too disgusting to witness," Bambam said as Jinyoung whipped around to glare at Jaebeom. Presumably for daring to infringe upon his natural right to be naked as the day he was born. 

Apparently the high selkies got off chlorine transferred even during shifts, unlike clothes, because Jinyoung overbalanced and slipped.

"Wow," deadpanned Youngjae. "Is this real life or is this a kdrama?"

Jaebeom had caught Jinyoung, but at what expense?

"I never needed to see Jinyoung's bare ass in my life," Bambam said in tones of deep despair.

Jamming his wet t-shirt over Jinyoung's head, Jaebeom said, "Didn't you bathe together when we were trainees?"

"I didn't look at Jinyoung's ass then!"

"Hyung!" Jinyoung corrected angrily from somewhere inside Jaebeom's t-shirt, head popping out just in time to glare evilly at Bambam.

"I wasn't looking at Jinyoung-_ hyung' _s ass," Bambam said.

"Good," Jinyoung said, shaking his hair out of his face, at the same time as Jaebeom.

Youngjae turned away, shoulders trembling, while Bambam sighed.

And then Jinyoung laughed unexpectedly, one of the bubbling delighted ones that burst out like he couldn't hold it in anymore, when his elbow got stuck in a sleeve. At least the shirt had fallen around his thighs to cover up all important bits.

"Okay," Bambam said. "I ... am going to just go bleach my eyeballs now I guess. Good luck with him, leader-hyung."

Proving his worth as The Best Child, Youngjae lingered, eyeing Jaebeom and his armful of giggly Jinyoung with concern. "Do you ... need help, hyung?"

"No --" Jinyoung flopped dramatically in his arms and Jaebeom staggered back a little. "Actually, yes. Can you just ... hold the door open? And go run a hot bath?"

  


*

  


In retrospect, Jaebeom was glad that he had yet to experience a hungover sea lion. 

A hungover Jinyoung was bad enough.

Being responsible was awful, Jaebeom decided, especially when the other person one could normally count upon to bear the responsibility _ with _ was incapacitated.

"Why did you let me drink so much," Jinyoung rasped into the hangover soup Jaebeom had group-ordered for breakfast before falling asleep. "Jaebeom-ah, I thought you loved me." 

The lilting prosody of Jinyoung's hometown accent was out in full force, distracting Jaebeom sufficiently as he repositioned Jinyoung's spoon to actually hit his mouth. 

"What?" he asked, belatedly parsing Jinyoung's actual words. "I -- I --"

At the other end of the table, Mark was falling asleep into his soup, Jackson was unshaven and red-eyed, Youngjae inhaling his soup desperately, and Bambam was nowhere to be seen. Yugyeom was doing yoga stretches outside in the morning sun, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as only one who _ knew their limits _ could. 

Jinyoung closed his eyes and didn't open them again. "You did this to me."

"I did _ not _," Jaebeom said indignantly.

"Please," begged Jackson, gulping down coffee, "it's too early for this." 

It really was, and Jinyoung seemed to agree, as he settled to finishing the rest of his soup in peaceful silence.

Half an hour later, the peace was shattered by Yugyeom slamming the sliding door open and yelling, "THEY'RE HERE GET READY QUICK QUICK QUICK!!!" 

"Kim Yugyeom," Jinyoung intoned in the dire tones of someone who would commit homicide, if only they had the energy for it. "Die." 

As it turned out, the production crew had less than zero sympathy for a hungover GOT7. 

"You guys are adults capable of making your own decisions," Manager-hyung said, sweeping a judgmental eye over the overflowing rubbish, "and dealing with the consequences of them."

And so, shades firmly on and cartons of coconut water desperately in hand, they were driven out to the beach to Have Fun, By Gum, And Entertainingly Hysterical Amounts Of It At That.

They were in the changing rooms when Jaebeom heard Jinyoung make a very particular noise in the next stall over. It was the sort of noise that usually accompanied a little furrow in his brow and the intensification of his resting pout face. 

Slinging his t-shirt and sweats over his shoulders, he went over. "Jinyoungie? Everything all right?"

Jaebeom _ had _ checked the night before; everything had seemed like they were what they ought to be, but maybe there was something he hadn't thought of. 

The door swung inwards on almost silent hinges to reveal Jinyoung in his wetsuit top and boardshorts, silver-grey pelt heaped in his arms. 

"...oh." Jaebeom couldn't really think of anything else to say. 

"I'm not sure," Jinyoung said, "if I could ... contain myself today."

"Right," said Jaebeom, staring. He tried to remember if he had ever seen Jinyoung's pelt before. Jinyoung had always managed to square it away before, secreting it somewhere safe. The double whammy of alcohol and the bloody chlorine high must have really impacted his higher functions. "Um. Let's --"

The words were stolen out of his mouth by Jinyoung carelessly shoving his pelt into his arms.

Brushing past him, Jinyoung murmured, "Hyung, keep this in your backpack for me, okay?", before sailing out of the changing room door.

Holding the pelt, which was buttery soft and really fucking heavy, Jaebeom stared after him. He'd read the books and trawled all of the Internet with the help of translation tools; he knew that what had just transpired was _ significant _. 

"Jaebeom-ah," Mark said, emerging from his own stall. "What's up?" 

He spotted the pelt in Jaebeom's arms at the same time that Jaebeom hefted it a little in response, eyebrows rising so high they seemed in danger of falling off his face. 

"I --" Jaebeom's voice failed him momentarily. And then his ability to string together a coherent sentence did too. "Jinyoungie -- pelt -- me???" 

"Oh my god," sighed Mark, rolling his eyes. "When will the two of you _ stop being so ridiculous _." 

  
  


**FINIT. **

  
  
  


Or is it. 

  
  


**EPILOGUE 1: In the not-so-distant future**

Jinyoung tracked him down to his studio, in the end, and sulked judgmentally at him in such a palpably sustained manner that Jaebeom caved and confessed it all: how he'd tried to fold up Jinyoung's pelt into as compact a package as possible in his backpack, and how he'd buried his backpack under everyone else's in the van, and then hounded the relevant manager-hyung every hour about whether he was _ sure _the van was locked or not. 

And then after that, the minor breakdown he'd had about being given Jinyoung's pelt, so carelessly and indifferently. 

"I'm only 25% selkie so the whole pelt bonding thing only works 25%, if even that," Jinyoung said, frowning. "Why are you so worked up?" 

"I'm _ not _ 'worked up'," Jaebeom said, jittering nervously in his chair despite the weight of Jinyoung in his lap. 

"Then why," Jinyoung demanded, pressing down hard on Jaebeom's jerking knee to still it, "have you been locked away in here avoiding me?"

Jaebeom made a frustrated noise that might or might not have been ripped directly from sea lion Jinyoung's greatest hits, and reached around Jinyoung to bring his laptop back to life.

"What are you --" Jinyoung twisted around and went quiet as Jaebeom clicked play on the demo he'd just finished, guitar and synths over the insistent ticking of a clock reverberating out of the studio speakers. 

Jaebeom tentatively held Jinyoung loosely around the waist as they listened, relaxing when Jinyoung nuzzled his face into the crook of Jaebeom's neck, his smile pressed into the skin there as the clock cut out at the prechorus. 

"I have to change the pronoun," Jaebeom said when the music faded out, "for the soundtrack, but --" 

"Me too," Jinyoung breathed, cutting him off, and leaned in. 

  
  
  


**EPILOGUE 2: In the distant future**

A living room near Busan, where the 50th BUSAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL is being broadcast, live.

"And now ... " announced Kim Tae-ri, "with a Special Mention in the Documentary category ... the Korean David Attenborough ... Choi Youngjae!" 

The room erupted into cheers. Popcorn was thrown aloft, drinks were spilt, and Bambam dabbed.

On screen, Youngjae was bouncing onto stage, that dear old broad grin spread across his face.

"I'm so proud," Jaebeom said, "who'd have thought?"

"Youngjae-hyung's always loved animals," Yugyeom said, clapping happily. "Jackson-hyung's going to be so mad he's missing this." 

Across the city, Youngjae readjusted the microphone stand, prompting a wave of laughter to ripple across the audience. 

"Well," he said in those warm, honeyed tones that had won over thousands of fangirls in his day, and now graced world-famous nature documentaries, "to tell you the truth, I owe it all to my old friend and member ... Park Jinyoung-sshi."

Yugyeom burst out laughing, Bambam having already pitched over onto his side next to him.

"I cannot believe he went there," Mark said, taking a long gulp from his wine glass.

Jaebeom buried his face in his hands.

From the saltwater pool that their living room opened up onto, Jinyoung royally waved a flipper in the television's general direction, dipping his muzzle, now flecked liberally with white, in gracious acknowledgment. 

**FINIT, FOR REAL THIS TIME**

**Author's Note:**

> I continue to have no excuses. The second epilogue is ENTIRELY INSPIRED by a comment bysine left on my gdoc. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this, please hit that kudos, give this [an RT](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1170868284188745728), and/or come chat in the comments!


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